I am a University of Florida grad from Gainesville, FL specializing in illustrated Web layouts and ExpressionEngine development. I'm the lead designer at Flourish, my very own design studio, and I occasionally do contract work for bigger firms. Follow me on Twitter and Go Gators!

A grid at its barest is nothing more than a series of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines spaced at regular intervals, but its innate propensity for creating order out of chaos makes it one of the most powerful tools at a designer’s disposal. If you want to reap their benefits of grids on your next project but are unsure of the specifics, this article is for you.

Grids are everywhere in our society, and have been for centuries, as this city plan for Washington, DC drawn in 1792 by Charles L’Enfant demonstrates. If you’re even vaguely acquainted with the fundamentals of graphic design, you’ve probably worked on some kind of a grid or at the very least seen examples of grid-based layouts. Grids are an established design tool, and a wealth of knowledge exists in the literature discussing the theory of grids and extolling their benefits. I will make no attempt to summarize them here (if you want a good primer on grid theory, have a look at this piece by Mark Boulton).

Subscribe to our email newsletter for useful tips and valuable resources, sent out every second Tuesday.

It's finally here. Smashing Book #5, our new book on real-life responsive design. With front-end techniques and patterns from actual projects, it's a playbook to master all the tricky facets and hurdles of responsive design. Get the book.Free shipping.

Fixing RWD issues can be quite easy — once you understand exactly why they come up. The Mobile Web Handbook will help you understand technical issues on mobile and how to deal with them effectively.

Hungry for more content? Over 60 eBooks are waiting to be discovered in our lovely Smashing Library. And guess what? You can watch Smashing Conference talks there, too.